This invention relates to the field of splice closures and more particularly relates to those splice closures which are suitable for telecommunications applications.
In the telecommunications industry, splice closures may be utilized in a variety of applications including pressurized and unpressurized telephone plant as well as underground, aerial and direct buried applications. No matter what the application, however, all the applications have in common that the splice closure has to be environmentally secure.
The most challenging applications for a splice closure are underground and direct buried applications in which the threat of water is most severe. Various schemes and designs have been proposed to solve the problem of water leakage in these applications. However, none so far is totally satisfactory. The most common method of protecting the underground and direct buried splice is to entirely encapsulate the splice with a urethane or similar encapsulant. While this method is satisfactory in many respects it has the drawbacks that it is messy, it is time consuming, it is physically exhausting and above all reentry of the splice is most difficult. To re-enter the splice, it is necessary to chip away or otherwise remove the cured encapsulant. This is an extremely time consuming and delicate task to accomplish without causing pair damage.
It would be most desirable to be able to protect an underground and direct buried splice without encapsulating it so that re-entry of the splice could be effectuated without much difficulty.
Alternatively, the splice may be protected by pressurizing the splice closure. In this case, encapsulation is unnecessary. However, many splice closures leak after a time so that the splice closure needs to be repaired or replaced.
It would thus be desirable to have an improved pressurized splice closure.
It is thus an object of the invention to provide a splice closure system in which encapsulation of the splice is unnecessary.
It is also an object of the invention to have a splice closure system which as far as practicable is not craft sensitive.
It is a further object of the invention to have an improved pressurized splice closure and a splice closure which will provide effective sealing and protection of splices in unpressurized cables.
These and other objects of the invention will become more apparent after reference to the following description considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.